Alot of people seem to not realize all that their Blackberry can do. The "SmartPhone" age has been here for some time now. But an alarming amount of people still just use their Blackberry as a phone only. Seems like a waste does it not? But one of the most useful and versatile functions or features of a smartphone or Blackberry in this case, is the calendar. Having the ability to schedule events, notify you of an upcoming event, record notes and memos about an event and to integrate an events information with almost everything else the phone does is absolutely indispensable.
Having a calendar is great and all, but if you do not know how to use it and how to integrate it with the other Blackberry features then you are missing out on roughly 75% of the calendars advantages. I will use myself as an example. Originally in the days before I had my first Blackberry, I would use a "Daytimer". It is basically a leather binder with daily, weekly, and monthly calendar sheets within on which I would record my upcoming events, appointments, meetings, etc.. It worked fantastic. However it was quite time consuming trying to write down everything as it occurred or as it became something I would need to remember. And as far as reminders go you can forget it. Unless I was already looking in the binder I would have almost no chance of noticing a future event was coming soon.
After that came finally utilizing the calendar and notes feature within Outlook. I had always used Outlook for my email but always saw the calendar part of Outlook as a nuisance. When I finally came to my senses I began using Outlooks calendar feature with reckless abandon. I would schedule everything in it. Having the ability to get audible and visual reminders on my computer became priceless. The strange thing is that even though I was fully using Outlook and all its scheduling features I just could not get rid of that damn leather binder. Something about actually writing the events and appointments I guess. But I moved on and only used the binder sparingly as Outlook became my major appointment calendar.
Moving on as time did the same, I got my first Blackberry. After acclimation myself to all of the Blackberry's features I found time to start studying the calendar and all that it could do. I was in love. Not because the Blackberry calendar was leaps and bounds better than everything else I have been using, but because of the mobility I now had with my scheduling. I was able to use my calendars that I was already using and at full functionality. But better yet, I was able to synchronize all that with what was going in with my Blackberry! I was going to be "ever-connected" to anything going on in my life!
At this point I was looking for a simple way to sync these calendars. Of course I could always use Blackberry's Desktop Manager to sync my phone with Outlook. It was a simple process of course, but I much preferred something wireless. Because that made it even simpler yet and opened the possibility to sync no matter where I was. To accomplish this I had to start a Google calendar. Which again, is a simple thing to do. So now, if you have been following along I have 3 calendars in action. Outlook - Blackberry - Google. The goal is to get all three of these talking to each other so they all have the same info and whenever something is changed I am able to have this change be reflected on all calendars and fast! To see how I did it and to have a quick reference on doing this - see the next post on the subject entitled: Syncing your Blackberry Calendar with Google and Outlook.
